Plankton - Some Definitions

• Seston: the totality of particulate matter in water; all material not in solution
• Tripton: non-living seston
• Plankton: living seston, adapted for a life spent wholly or partly in quasi-suspension in open water, and whose powers of motility do not exceed turbulent entrainment
• Nekton: animals adapted to living all or part of their lives in open water but whose intrinsic movements are almost independent of turbulence
• Euplankton: redundant term to distinguish fully adapted, truly planktic organisms from other living organisms fortuitously present in the water
• Tychoplankton: non-adapted organisms from adjacent habitats and present in the water mainly by chance
• Meroplankton: planktic organisms passing a major part of their life history out of the plankton
• Limnoplankton: plankton of lakes
• Heleoplankton: plankton of ponds
• Potamoplankton: plankton of rivers
• Phytoplankton: planktic photoautotrophs and major producer of the pelagic
• Bacterioplankton: planktic prokaryotes
• Mycoplankton: planktic fungi
• Zooplankton: planktic metazoa and heterotrophic protistans